ACTOR/ACTIVIST RUSSELL MEANS DEAD AT 72

Russell Means, who first rose to prominence as a leader of the 1973 Wounded Knee uprising of Native American activists and who later was cast in a major role in the movie The Last of the Mohicans, has died of cancer at his ranch in Porcupine, South Dakota at age 72. Means became a popular figure among New York’s “radical chic” in the 1970s, immortalized in portrait by Andy Warhol. After Mohicans, he also appeared in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers and was the voice of the Indian chief in Disney’s Pocahontas in 1995. He guest-starred on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2004. Means was diagnosed with esophageal cancer last year but said that he would seek treatment from practitioners of traditional Indian medicine rather than mainstream cancer specialists. The survival rate among esophageal cancer victims treated by U.S. physicians is poor, however. There is no known cure.